


in jupiter it rains

by honeysugarchocolate



Series: there is water in the sun [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternative Universe - Delinquants, Alternative Universe - SNK, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassin Na Jaemin, Big Gay Love Story, Bodyguard Lee Jeno, Cannibal Lee Jeno, Canonical Alternate Universe, Empath Na Jaemin, Implied Sexual Content, Jaemin is an angel obviously, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Roommates, Street Racing, Temporary Character Death, Titan Na Jaemin, Various Lifetimes, With A Sprinkle of Poetry, Wizard Mark Lee, breaking up, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 17:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22346902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeysugarchocolate/pseuds/honeysugarchocolate
Summary: In some of these lifetimes he kills Jaemin himself. In others he hurts him again and again, thinking that Jaemin must be some kind of ghost, some kind of curse, peering through every crack in his house, in every open hole, too blind to see Jaemin always reaching out to protect him, reel him in, save him from the things he never notices, covering a wound that never really heals.Or; guardian angel jaemin falls in love with his first assignment, lee jeno, and chases him times and times again, universe after universe, always finding a way to the spaces between jeno's honey bones.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Series: there is water in the sun [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677892
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69





	in jupiter it rains

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically nomin in numerous lifetimes/universes featuring wizard mark lee cuz why tf not. 
> 
> it's chaotic af but it was SO MUCH FUN to write i hope you like it ♡

The beginning of it all is as sweet as a mirage birthed from glass petals. 

Jaemin's watching his human, Lee Jeno, sink to his knees in the pink, bubble-filled bathtub. It smells like lilac and the tone of his skin is something a few shades darker than beautiful. Jeno is holding down on the space bar to prove a point, brows knotted up in a frown. 

"Why don't you drop your phone in the water?" Jaemin says, but as always, Jeno doesn't hear him through the veil, doesn't even feel his presence right next to him on the cold bathroom floor. And no matter how much Jaemin wants to reach out and trace the silhouettes Jeno's eyelashes construct upon his cheekbones, he can't unveil himself. "He's not worth it."

The phone's blue light glow reflects itself in Jeno's pale eyes and he tears up, working shaky fingers through his obsidian hair. "Why are boys so stupid?" he sobs and for a minute it feels like he's talking to Jaemin, like he's seeking comfort in between his guardian angel's ribs. For a single moment Jaemin feels like Jeno knows he's there, like he knows Jaemin watches him sleep every night and wraps his wings around him to keep the demons at bay. 

But he doesn't. 

"I don't know," Jaemin replies, because he can't lie, because lies twist his tongue. He's an angel after all. 

And just like that the realization that he's in love with his first assignment, Lee Jeno, festers insides him, butterfly by butterfly, until he's choking on them, and it drives him straight to Mark the almighty wizard. Jaemin promises the midnight sun and everything in between if Mark made him human just so he can talk to Jeno. 

He tells Mark about how he wants to be the one Jeno loves, the one who kisses Jeno goodnight and texts to ask him if he's alright. He tells Mark that he wants to sit with Jeno in his bathroom at two in the morning, massaging his scalp with lavender hair dye and holding him while he cries, knitting him back together with a crystal needle while he unravels like a delicate woolen string. 

Mark tells him he's disgusting and does it anyway, but in return takes Jaemin's immortality; although Jaemin can be reincarnated through multiple lifetimes with Jeno, at some point he will no longer be able to reincarnate, and dissipate like a summer cloud on Jupiter. 

But Jaemin, who is young and so, so in love his ribs fold like lawn chair legs, goes through with it and pops up in the bathroom next to Jeno who's blearily brushing his teeth, declaring with his heart so full it nearly leaps out of his mouth, "Hello, I'm your angel!" and of course, in their first lifetime together, the first thing Jeno does is punch Jaemin so hard his nose splutters blood and file for a twenty meter restraining order. 

Except Jaemin, ever the fighter, does not give up and waits for their next lifetime, which is a dystopian gutter of some sorts, crawling with tongue twisting limbs and the filthiest of monsters. Colonel Lee is humanity's best soldier and the blinking candle of hope amongst grime and rotten blood, and Jaemin is an artificial Titan glued together with sweat and desperation and everything in between to fight Titans and other creatures of the night. 

Admittedly, the only thing fighter Jaemin does is drool rivers when he sleeps and crush buildings when he finds something funny— which usually isn't even that funny if Jeno has any say in it. 

At first the two of them don't get along, mixing just about as well as fire and ice —which is no surprise really, given Jeno's short fuse and Jaemin's inability to comprehend anything more advanced than "NO" and "KILL"— but eventually they warm their way into something a little more than just co-existing. 

Jeno the clean freak sometimes hoses Jaemin's hair down and lops it off with his gear and combs it with his arms. In return, Jaemin sometimes gives Jeno a ride on his shoulder when his gear is broken, or when he's running late for a meeting with Anal Commander Taeyong. And well, everyone is surprised when one day Jeno tells Jaemin a very detailed command to clean his tent and Jaemin actually understands, nodding so hard his hair flops, and does a banging job with it. 

This universe, however, ends when one day Jeno and Jaemin are out on an expedition and when, cornered by a pack of titans, Jeno tells Jaemin the simplest command to "RUN" but Jaemin doesn't understand, just rolls over him protectively and refuses to move until hours later, when the rest of the squad arrives and peels Jaemin's corpse off of Jeno. 

Colonel Lee's never shed a tear for the death of a soldier, even less that of an artificial solider, but as Jaemin's corpse begins crumbling down into ashes, he hangs onto Jaemin's giant hands so tight their flesh nearly melts with one another and they become one and the same, and keeps ordering him to stay and stay and stay. 

In the next lifetime, then, when Jeno is the leader of a motorcycle gang and Jaemin is a lone wolf delinquent who sings to streetlights about a love that keeps falling through his fingers in shreds— he remembers that word. Jaemin looks like trouble because he's dunked in black, but Jeno looks at those puppy dog eyes, and those love heavy lips and just knows the boy is soft underneath. So as Jaemin turns to leave after a brawl with one of Jeno's underling, Jeno tells him to "Wait, stay." 

But when Jaemin yells, pupils meeting pupils, eyes finding a long lost self, elated that for the first time Jeno actually likes him back, and kisses Jeno smack on the mouth with a desperation too sweet it turns sour, history repeats itself and Jeno gives Jaemin a shiner so dark that Jaemin's got to put ice on it for a month. 

Still, this lifetime is all about boyish skin and young hips on young hips. In this lifetime, Jeno hangs out with Jaemin voluntarily, lets Jaemin pull him by his waist and kiss him into oblivion, and wreck havoc in his bedsheets the way he would never let Donghyuck or Renjun. In this lifetime, he grabs Jaemin's hand and they run around the city at 3 AM; slow motion shadows, like twin cats, with neon lights in Jaemin's eyes and Jeno's voice like soda on independence day. In this lifetime, he lets Jaemin sit on his lap at 12 AM, by the park, when he's got a smirk on his lips and smoke in his lungs and a pair of eyes on Jeno's neck. In this lifetime, Jeno lets his guard down and falls in love, just a little— not fast enough, of course, not before he dies in a biking accident. 

The last thing he remembers of this lifetime is Jaemin who's tough like raw meat and sweet like cherry cola all at once, clutching his hands, crying and bleeding blue like his world had ended.

The next lifetime, Jeno picks up a hobby eating well-presented human meat for dinner, and Jaemin is an empath —a detective, in simpler terms— who keeps annoying him with requests for dinner dates when the sun is sleeping on his skin. The odd part is, Jeno who has little attachment for other men —you can't feel sorry for what you eat after all— keeps thinking that Jaemin... Jaemin with hair in his eyes, Jaemin who stares at the floor, Jaemin with one too many colors in his cheeks... Jaemin is different. 

Jeno follows him at first, trying to understand what it is about Jaemin that sets him apart, that lights up his nerves. But before he finds the answer, he notices another serial killer stalking Jaemin and, for the first time, he kills another man not because the man had been rude, but simply because... he had wanted something for himself. And it's quite the troublesome, this new desire, like when the bottle cracks. Breaks in his hand and cuts him deep. He thinks he needs to put some lead in his head to stop thinking of Jaemin. His brain keeps twitching the way weak muscles do; he can't calculate so well when feelings are fogging up his mind, and it doesn't take long for the FBI to catch him. 

On his last night, he invites Jaemin for dinner and confesses his nature and that soon he will be arrested and killed. But Jaemin doesn't look away from him. Jaemin doesn't scream, Jaemin isn't even surprised. And it's only a little unsettling. "I've always known," Jaemin says, "From the very beginning. I'm an empath, after all." 

And Jeno says, something red rekindling behind his eyes, "Oh, god, you're psychotic." 

Except Jaemin laughs, "Well so are you!" 

For their last —and first— meal, Jaemin kisses Jeno hard like he wants his boy more than he wants to breathe, their tongues swell, pulse, red as they scrap against each other. He touches Jeno until Jeno's a little off, off the wagon, off his rocker, off a cliff, touches him where Jeno had never known he could feel and when he's finally buried deep in Jeno's earth his lover moves like red reeds in the erotic wind, swaying and salacious, forceful and flowing. He lets Jeno slowly sink a knife into his chest as they crash against each other's sandy shores, chasing that high they both craved for so, so long. Jeno eats a heart as dessert, a web of heartstrings and veins and arteries, and shoots himself dead right there beside Jaemin's body, Jaemin who will always be his, who has been his since the very beginning. 

The memories of this life, of course, are nightmares to Jeno when he's reborn again and grows up to be a college student whose roommate looks like the dude whose heart he eats in his dreams and moans at the sweet taste, and who'd once held his hand as he died by an abandoned mountain road and withered under the moonlight, who was sometimes a giant, naked ball of dumb that slobbered everywhere. Dreaming of Jaemin is like licking old wounds open and bloody and far too messy to look at. He's dug himself under every layer of skin that belongs to Jeno. 

The least convenient thing, then, is that these dreams make Jeno think that Jaemin must be some kind of closet psycho readying to kill his own roommate and take his organs as souvenirs. 

To prevent this, he treats Jaemin extra bad and purposely leaves Jaemin out of his friends circle, lets Jaemin walk out without an umbrella when he knows it's going to rain, lets Jaemin make dinner and stay up all night waiting for him to come home and eat it, until the wee hours of the morning when he's slumped over asleep with his head flopped into a bowl of ramen. Jeno treats Jaemin like shit, but mysteriously Jaemin always forgives him, comes back, and tells him, still so, so warm even in the dead of winter, "You're the reason I exist, I've only got you." 

And a few more years and Jeno thinks, fuck it, Jaemin can't be all that normal either. And like apples on ice, he can feel the crush of his doubts and hatred between Jaemin's molars as he smiles. Perhaps this lifetime is the one where Jeno loves Jaemin the most, for the longest.

Jaemin makes love to him, veins and muscles bulging through so many layers of fabric, too much clothing, tearing it all off, creating abstract art on Jeno's skin and painting a whole new universe behind Jeno's teeth. Jeno kisses him, open-mouthed, panting, sloppy and Jaemin's too drunk on his tongue, warm and wet and too much, with his trousers piled at his feet, Jeno's shirt hitched obscenely to expose his cherub, boiling skin. Jaemin wraps his hand around Jeno's wrists, ties his fingers around his jaw and neck, Jeno thinks they make a perfect collar, bending him back and back as lust burned for flesh. At that angle, each time their hips clashed, Jaemin would fill him up so completely Jeno is certain he'd burst and evaporate into sweet nothingness. Jeno maps out the veins in Jaemin's arms, like he's letting them guide him back home, like he's loved Jaemin from the very beginning. And the dam breaks. 

They move in together after college, then after graduate school, then after they're well-off enough not to need a roomate. And they age together, intertwining their souls in an intimate tangle of limbs and interwoven fingers every night until Jeno is eighty and Jaemin isn't much younger and they both have back problems and play rock paper scissors for first dibs in the bath. 

This time, Jaemin is the first to go. Jeno comes home one day from an oncologist visit and finds Jaemin slumped over the dinner table, right over a bowl of ramen like when they were young, when Jeno had so many feelings for Jaemin he didn't understand half of them, when he was homesick for a boy who hasn't even left yet. And Jeno just sits next to Jaemin whose lungs no longer inflate to paint the very air Jeno breathes, and pets his hair and says, "Thanks for waiting." 

But in the next lifetime, when Jeno and Jaemin become the rappers of korean idol group NCT Dream, things no longer hold together and rattle beneath their feet like the subway train. Jeno begins remembering their past lifetimes like yesterday, like they had just happened, and it boils his blood to the point it foams up like a September storm and he hunts Jaemin down one day after practice and asks him if he remembers the same. 

Jaemin tells him, his voice so soft yet Jeno feels it like a punch to his throst, "I'm your guardian angel, I love you."

But Jeno looks at him like he's gone mad, like Jaemin shoved his brain into a slow cooker, and tells him, "Whatever this is, it's not funny. Don't come near me." And no matter what Jaemin tries to do, Jeno only tolerates him on camera, and leaves miles between them, chasms the size of universes between them, when they're alone. 

This is when Mark explains to Jeno something that he won't remember for all the lifetimes after this one, all the lifetimes that he will spend shunning the odd, flirty guy who looks like a five year old wearing a face two decades too old tailing him in each universe, always claiming to be his angel with a smile that never leaves his lips until the seasons melt them both down the drain. 

In some of these lifetimes he kills Jaemin himself. In others he hurts him again and again, thinking that Jaemin must be some kind of ghost, some kind of curse, peering through every crack in his house, in every open hole, too blind to see Jaemin always reaching out to protect him, reel him in, save him from the things he never notices, covering a wound that never really heals.

Then, one day, in one life, he remembers Mark Lee saying "Jaemin didn't lie. He really was your angel." Although the memory becomes stronger, and Jeno sees Jaemin's name in the water stains that started forming after the storm six lifetimes ago, he can never really remember what Mark said after that. 

Still, it's enough to let him approach Jaemin again, dozens of lifetimes later, and open his mouth and say, for the first time in centuries, "Hello, Jaemin." And Jaemin looks so damned happy, shining a butane blue, illuminated by the fluorescent lights overhead, and yells so loud that Jeno remembers it instantly, that one time that Jaemin had met him as a delinquent and nearly broke his bones hugging the life out of him, and spilled a wet kiss on his tainted lips, painting them both lavender because he was so happy that Jeno had remembered him. It makes Jeno so sorry for all these lifetimes he'd neglected Jaemin who'd been waiting for him, never tiring, never retreating. 

It might have been a long time since the last time they've been together, but love still fits like a silk glove. Jeno falls instantly, so fast and so hard it was like he had been pulling himself back, on a winded string, for centuries. And Jaemin catches him, of course, whole-bodied, laughing so hard his mouth could've split his face in two, roaming Jeno's curves like an experienced sailor returning to sea. 

This happiness doesn't last, though, as in the next he remembers what Mark had said afterwards, that Jaemin was his angel but "Jaemin won't reincarnate you forever. One day he will disappear, and you'll spiral through the rest of your lives alone, and eventually you'll forget him. That's the deal he'd made, when I turned him human. He'd traded immortality for a couple of seconds in love, the numbnuts." 

The memory —those words— punch Jeno in the guts, punches his plastic skin and ivory bones, so hard that he can't return Jaemin's calls or look at him for weeks, and when he does, the first thing he asks is "Why didn't you tell me? If you loved me, you would've told me, let me share your pain. It's not fair, all this time you've been the one protecting me. You've never let me do the same for you. It's not fair, it's not love," and he can see the tears in Jaemin's eyes as his velveteen whip voice cracks Jeno's name, soft and brutal all at once. 

This is the only lifetime in which they break up. Jeno packs up all of Jaemin's things, their short lived euphoria and glass shards of his own heart in a box and leaves it at Jaemin's doorstep and dies alone, this time, with his heart crushed to debris between his ribs, until he wakes up in the next. 

And that's when assassin Na Jaemin pulls over beside his car one day, his eyes subaqueous slates and his hair weaved with threads of grey sun rays, and says, "Hey, I'm looking for a body guard. Are you any good at protecting my heart?" 

Jeno throws all of his meter-tall stack of legal papers at Jaemin's face because he's so damned angry that it's so easy to forgive Jaemin and drown in the aquatic depths of his eyes, but he gets in Jaemin's car anyway and tells him, "My starting salary is at two kisses a day and of course, lodging would be provided, especially a pillow next to yours." 

And Jaemin grins, something in his eyes sloshing viciously like waves trapped within the black confines of his pupils and responds, "The pillow's been waiting for you since hundred years ago," and kisses Jeno twice on the lips, humming at the taste of his syrupy cherry chapstick, as they drive off, for good luck. 

This lifetime is their happiest. This lifetime their lovemaking is nothing short of Jeno chasing the mango dulcet in Jaemin's veins with his lips, breathing blue over sleek perspiration as the honey bones beneath Jaemin's toffee skin fold and unfold, and he unravels beneath Jeno like the fraying edges of a thread. Palms and knees skimming up thighs, incoherent mumbles punctuating every whine and whimper. Urgency runs everything over while frustration guides hands down metal zippers. Or maybe not frustration. 

Maybe just urgency. Because they're always in a rush for the grains of sand vanishing from the creases of their palms. Because as days peel off like rose petals and winter folds into spring, lovemaking is less about sharp thrusts and smoldering gazes, and more about humid silences trapped between the sheets in Jaemin's apartment. 

This lifetime, Jaemin tells Jeno, "One day a death god will come for me, and he'll take me away." To which Jeno responds, of course, that "I'm your body guard, leave it to me," and rents out a hot-air balloon when they're in their old age, so that they'll never be caught, so that Jaemin will never die— at least, not now, not yet, when he's only just learned to love Jaemin the way Jaemin's always loved him, when the figure of Jaemin at the foot of his bed is no longer some summer fever dream, but real and warm and tangled in blue sheets, blue fingertips, blue lips. 

But the death god has wings, and he finds them in their hot air balloon and Jeno whips out a cane and orders Jaemin to sit back. He's just about pushed the death god out of the balloon when, out of nowhere, his scythe slices into the air, going right for Jeno's face. Jeno tries to duck, even though he knows that he'd never make it in time, but somehow, he doesn't feel any kind of impact or pain, and when he opens his eyes, he realizes that Jaemin's jumped in front of him, that the scythe had cut right into Jaemin, right into his heart, the heart Jaemin had promised always belonged to Jeno, the heart he'd ripped out of his ribcage and offered Jeno to eat. And just like that, spring comes and the crests disappear and leave only a steady stream of troughs. 

The sight takes every word out of him, every breath and every thought, breaks him down into so many little pieces that he can't even understand the whimpered string of why why why why tumbling out of his own lips but Jaemin leans forward, wraps those familiar, warm arms around Jeno and says, "Because I'm your guardian angel, is why." 

Jeno grasps at him, clutches hard onto him, so, so hard as if he cracked every limb open and broke Jaemin into a thousand pieces he'd find him again. He tries to give Jaemin all of his warmth to keep him from fading— but even then he can feel Jaemin dissipating into smokey air, until what he's hugging is just a projection of reds and greens and greys and blues painted over and over again, until he looks up and he can't see Jaemin's fluorescent smile anymore. 

So Na Jaemin disappears like this, in his arms, into thin air, like the first time they'd met, back when Jaemin was a Titan that could barely understand language and Jeno a midget who didn't like talking. Dust to dust, they say, and air to air. 

At the end of this very last lifetime, after Jeno takes his last breath, he finds Mark standing before him. "We're missing an angel, since Jaemin went M.I.A. You interested in being a recruit? At least you know the ropes fairly well."

And Jeno says yes, maybe because there's nothing else left for him, anyway, because he's not sure how exactly he's meant to live without the one thing that'd breathed warmth into the spaces between his bones and always been with him through thick and thin. 

Mark takes him up past the clouds, way past the edge of many multiverses out there, and tells Jeno, "Each angel is allowed one wish. Jaemin's was to become a human beside you. Let me know if you have one, when you think of it. Take your time. You have eternity, after all." 

Jeno doesn't need an eternity to decide. He doesn't even need a second. He stops Mark in his steps and says, tongue heavy with one too many emotions, "I want Jaemin to be back again. I want Jaemin to be alive." 

Mark hums, "But creating a life is hard, you know?" and Jeno clings onto Mark, like Jaemin had clung onto him all those centuries, and says, "I'll give you my memories of him. We don't have to remember each other. I just, I want to hear him laugh again, even if I won't understand it."

It takes some nagging, but Mark agrees, and eventually after some training, one day Lee Jeno the guardian angel is given his first assignment. It's easy to assign him, of course, because he has no memories, no hate, no love, no prejudice. A blank canvas and an empty glass heart. 

They give him the name in an envelope. Na Jaemin, it says. Jeno nods and stretches out his wings and flies down to human Na Jaemin, who doesn't recognize him, really, and who he doesn't recognize either. On the first night, as Jeno watches Jaemin sleep soundly, shrouded in a silver of moonlight, he feels like he's a home to pain that isn't his. But it curls into hibernation as soon as the daylight stretches into Jaemin's room. 

A few days blur by and Jeno, because he's new at the job and not actually as smart as everyone assumes he is, accidentally unveils himself one day while tailing Jaemin on his way to soccer practice. 

Except Jaemin, surprisingly, isn't all that shocked to see some guy with a pair of giant, fluffy, shining wings. Instead he just helps Jeno pick up pieces of some vase he'd knocked over and asks, casual, "What are you, an angel?" 

And Jeno squints and looks at him and confesses, because angels aren't allowed to lie, and because Jaemin's smile is bright enough to dip deep in his belly and bleed rivers that sing only his name, "Yeah, your guardian angel."

Jaemin laughs and pulls him into a headlock —potentially the first human ever documented to do something so audacious— and says, "Cool, stay with me, ok?" 

And Jeno ruffles his feathers and grumbles, because he doesn't know anything besides the fact that Jaemin's lips leaves warm kisses between the spaces in his bones whenever he smiles, 

"I will. Always." 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm curious what are y'all's fav lifetimes in this? also thank you so much for being here ♡


End file.
